Moccia active in world of collegiate athletics

LAS CRUCES –New Mexico State Director of Athletics Mario Moccia is very active in the collegiate sports world.

Moccia is currently the Sun Belt Conference liaison to the Division IA Athletic Directors Association, the President of the Minority Opportunities Athletic Association (MOAA) and the Western Athletic Conference athletic director liaison for baseball

It sounds like a lot. But even with those, Moccia doesn’t leave Las Cruces to fulfill duties normally done via conference calls.

The Division IA Athletic Directors Association is made of the 129 athletic directors from the schools that play at the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Each of the 10 FBS conferences has a liaison to sit on the Board of Directors, which Moccia is for the Sun Belt. The board will get together and talk about issues like student-athlete time demands and other issues in Division I sports.

“We get together, we explain it, we have opportunities to bring up these topics,” said Moccia, who’s been NMSU’s athletic director since January 2015. “Whether it’s (student-athlete) time demands or the EA Sports legal issues of image and likeness, or concussions or potentially delving out NCAA revenues on more of an academic based methodology. We will discuss how the agendas are and how it is presented as a board. And my job, and everybody’s else’s, is just report back to the Sun Belt Conference and maybe even take Sun Belt Conference positions to this board so they know ‘Hey, this is how the Sun Belt Conference feels about issues X, Y and Z.’”

NMSU will be in the Sun Belt for football through the 2017 season and will play as an independent, hoping to find a conference home in the near future.

Moccia is currently in the middle of a two-year term as the president of MOAA, which will end in June 2017. Prior to being the president, Moccia was on the board and the vice president. MOAA includes over 600 minority athletic administrators nationwide and advocates for increased participation and administrative opportunities for minorities in athletics. Moccia was elected the president of the association in May 2015 by its members.

As President of the MOAA, Moccia is also on the board of directors for the John McLendon Foundation, which awards scholarships to minority candidates who intend to pursue a graduate degree in athletics administration. Other board members include the likes of Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson and Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed.

MOAA falls under the umbrella of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), which "serves as the professional association for those in the field of athletics administration, providing educational opportunities and serves as a vehicle for networking and the exchange of information to others in the profession," according to its website.

Moccia just added the role of being the WAC AD liaison for baseball this week. Moccia was a captain for the NMSU baseball team in the late 1980s, graduating from NMSU in 1989.

"When the Western Athletic Conference has their annual meeting or baseball issues, I will be the administrator liaison of the sport," Moccia said. "I’ll be on the conference call with coaches, will be deliberating with the things with the WAC.”

In the past, Moccia has been on NCAA Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet, was the Football Championship Subdivision representative for the NCAA’s Administration Committee and served as liaison to the Men’s Basketball Committee.

And with Moccia being very active in the collegiate sports world, it puts helps put NMSU at the table on a wide range of issues.